MiniChef: Where LEGO Bricks Meet Robots & Dining
@ LEGO HOUSE
What We Built & The BRIEF
We wanted to turn family dining into pure magic. Imagine a restaurant powered by LEGO values—humor, play, healthy food, and a touch of Willy Wonka chaos.
The concept? The minifigures are cooking in the kitchen, but they only speak LEGO. To order, guests build their meal using real bricks, scan them at the table, watch 3D animated mini-chefs "cook" on-screen, and pick up their food delivered in giant LEGO boxes by two friendly industrial robots.
Quick Highlights:
Won a Webby Award for Best Marketing Experience
Welcomed over 250,000+ happy guests every year
Watch how LEGO fans experience the Minichef
Designing the App, Scanners & Menus
Digital Scanning UX: Designed the table screens so scanning bricks felt like magic for kids and completely intuitive for parents.
Hand-Crafted Menus: Created the physical paper menu cards, mapping Kadeau’s organic menu into a simple, colorful brick-building key.
Seamless Tech: Linked table scanners directly to the kitchen POS to route orders instantly behind the scenes.
App UX, Brick-Scanning & Custom Design
Physical-Digital Interface: Designed the end-to-end table app UI, interactive order callouts, and digital queuing screens.
Graphic & Print Design: Designed the physical menu card, App design and animation sequence with Kiss the Frog and HiQ and Style helping guest navigate the brick scanning and ordering system, creating the visual key that translates food ingredients into color-coded LEGO brick combinations.
Backend Alignment: Bridge-built real-time brick scans directly to kitchen POS queuing systems and automated box routing.
Gastronomy Integration: Aligned the graphic ordering language with Kadeau's organic culinary development to ensure a seamless dining workflow.
RObotics, Motion & Service Design
Industrial Automation & Behavioral Logic: Directed the motion design, behavioral animations, and guest interaction logic for two customized ABB industrial robots in collaboration with HiQ and ABB Robotics.
Physical-Digital Delivery Systems: Supported the hardware engineering, box-routing mechanics, and safety integration for the conveyor belt delivery system.
Service Design & Operational EX: Authored front-of-house staff scripts, UI management tools, and service workflows to ensure human hospitality seamlessly complemented the robotic narrative.
